Life's A Dance
by ilovetvalot
Summary: Hotch and Reid discuss life.


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**Life's A Dance**

As Aaron Hotchner sat alone in the back of the dimly lit bar nursing a drink, his eyes surveyed his surroundings, mentally cataloguing details. It was a habit, of course, built on years of profiling. Years of experience had trained him to always know his environment...to know where the doors were...know where problems might be lurking...to know how to get the hell out if it all got too overwhelming.

Why the hell had he agreed to this anyway, he asked himself as he took another sip of the beer he'd ordered. Eyes drifting toward the pool table where Morgan was currently kicking Dave's ass, he snorted. Oh yeah. He remembered now. Like most things, he'd blame it on Rossi.

The older man was on a one man crusade to ensure that, somehow, Aaron Hotchner learned to live again.

What the older profiler didn't realize was that learning to live again after Haley...after JJ...hell, after Emily...was killing him.

Too much fucking loss for one man to tolerate, that much was certain. If you looked up suffer in the dictionary these days, he was fairly certain the publisher of Webster's had finally inserted his grim faced countenance as an illustration.

"Hotch, you okay?" Spencer Reid's soft voice spoke from behind him.

Lifting his gaze from the glass he held, Hotch turned slightly on his stool to look at his youngest team member. "Just woolgathering, I guess," he admitted sheepishly.

"Must be serious," Spencer murmured, taking the stool opposite the older man. "Never caught you just staring into space before," he noted with mild interest as he propped his chin on one of his hands and reached for his soda with the other.

"You aren't drinking?" Hotch asked curiously, noting the Sprite in Spencer's hand.

"Never drink." Spencer shook his head. "Recovering addict, remember?"

Grimacing, Hotch shook his head. He hadn't remembered. "Sorry," he muttered, ashamed of his blunder. What the hell kind of Unit Chief didn't remember that one of the team's, let alone the FBI's, brightest stars was recovering from a drug addiction?

"It's okay, Hotch," Spencer said as he shrugged. "Honestly, it makes me feel better that you guys sometimes forget. I'm not exactly proud of my condition."

"You didn't go looking for it, Reid," Hotch reminded him quickly, never willing to allow the younger man to forget the circumstances that had forced him into a situation that none of them could have ever expected.

"No, but I didn't fight it too hard either. Not when I should have," Reid replied bluntly. "But we weren't talking about me. It's you that I'm concerned about. You aren't exactly yourself lately," he noted softly.

Twitching his lips, Hotch snorted. "I hate to sound like a sad country song, but I think my give a damn might be busted, Reid."

"Uhmmm," Reid hummed uncertainly, "O-kay," he said slowly.

"In other words, I'm finding very little, other than my son, to care about anymore," Hotch clarified, tipping the beer to his lips again as he ignored another pretty woman shooting him a come hither smile.

"I see," Reid said slowly as he nodded. "You know, Gideon used to tell me that life's a dance."

"Now you sound like a country song," Hotch snorted, tipping his glass toward the younger man. "Are you a closet fan?"

"Not quite," Reid chuckled. "But I do think Gideon had a point."

"Go on," Hotch invited with a sigh. It couldn't hurt to hear what the certified genius had to say...even if it was second hand information.

Clearing his throat, Reid tightened his fingers around his own sweating glass. A little nervous, he wasn't exactly accustomed to sharing his philosophical thoughts with Aaron Hotchner unless they related to an unsub. "I'm trying to remember what he said," Reid lied as he stalled for time.

"You've got an eidetic memory, Reid," Hotch chuckled. "I think you remember."

"Good point," Reid mumbled. Taking a deep breath, he said quickly, "It's just, in a way, Gideon's analysis seems a little juvenile, but honestly, it's the most accurate I've ever heard. He said that life was a dance. The music plays...the music changes, but the dance remains...we move to the beat. Those motions can be fast and furious like a foxtrot or as slow and deliberate as a waltz. Our goal is to simply keep up. The constancy...the consistency remains in our movements. It's when we stop moving that the music dies."

"So, in short, you're telling me to keep moving forward, correct?" Aaron sighed, wondering how the young man had gotten so very worldly when he wasn't looking. He doubted all the credit could be laid at Jason Gideon's feet.

"The music is still playing, Hotch," Reid said quietly, lifting his eyes to stare at the older man. "Standing still isn't going to stop it."

"Are you telling me to dance, Spencer?" Hotch asked with a faint smile.

Sipping his soda, Reid nodded. "I suppose I am," he finally admitted. "But if it helps, I've learned to do it with two left feet. And you're much more coordinated than I am. And for the record, this is Jason's wisdom, not mine."

"But you agree with it," Hotch pointed out. "Don't you?" he queried, watching the younger man's face carefully.

"It seems logical," Reid stated. "I'm a big fan of logic, though," he added weakly as he shrugged self-consciously.

"It's hard," Hotch confided, staring down at his now empty glass.

"What is?" Reid prodded, glancing toward the group of their colleagues gathered around the pool table.

"Learning all the dance steps to this thing called life," Hotch replied flatly.

"It's because the dance is always changing, remember?" Reid replied evenly, well aware of exactly how difficult that very concept could be. "So we stumble...sometimes, we fall. I think the point is to just keep dancing."

"And when we don't like the song playing?" Hotch challenged, leaning back slightly as he kept his hands wrapped around the bottle.

"Wait until the next one begins, I guess," Spencer answered wearily. Meeting Hotch's dark eyes, he asked starkly. "After all, what choice do we really have?"

Staring at the slim man perched on the wooden stool across from him, he saw the weight of the world reflected in those hazel eyes of his. And it was much too heavy a burden to see in one so young. "You're right, Reid," Hotch said sincerely, the need to reaffirm what Gideon had taught him a tangible thing as he spoke. In those brief moments of conversation, he'd learned that Spencer Reid was as lost as he felt himself to be, and the only thing connecting him to sanity was the lesson Gideon had taught him. "We don't get a choice," he said decisively, straightening his slumped spine. Glancing toward an empty pool table, Hotch jerked his head in that direction. "How about you and I go have a dance of our own?"

"With pool cues?" Reid grimaced. "Did I mention that I wasn't exactly coordinated, Hotch?"

"Life's a dance, Spencer. We learn as we go, right?" he winked, sliding off the stool.

Sighing heavily as he followed his boss, Reid nodded. Yeah, life was a dance all right, he thought as he watched Hotch grab a stick from the wall. And if there was a higher power out there in the universe, hopefully it would change this particular music soon.

**Finis**

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